


The Sense Of Time Catching Up With Me

by lordbatty



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Blood and Injury, Body Horror, Broken Bones, Emotional Baggage, F/F, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Infected Characters, Law Of Surprise, M/M, Mild Gore, No Lesbians Die, No Spoilers, Organs, Other, Roach is a car (AT FIRST), Self-Medication, Swearing, Weapons, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombie Bites, Zombies, blood and mild gore, general zombie apocalypse horror and gore mentions apply here, medication mentions, set in modern Poland
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 07:40:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22452526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordbatty/pseuds/lordbatty
Summary: The first time zombies spread across Rynek, Poland, people began to wonder just how much there was left to keep a hold of.And for Geralt, not only was there more than enough to lose the first time the undead tore through the streets, but now there was everything to lose.With no more room for errors.And no excuse for secrets.
Relationships: Cirilla & Geralt, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Jasiker & Ciri, Jasiker & Triss, Jasiker & Yennefer, Triss & Ciri, Triss & Geralt, Triss Merigold/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Yennefer & Ciri, Yennefer & Geralt
Comments: 10
Kudos: 61





	1. Part 1: I Think We’re Going Down

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot believe I have pushed out nearly 6+ chapters of this in less than a week, so now I finally get to post it as a promise to myself that as long and I kept writing chapters after chapters and kept it fresh in my head.
> 
> This is basically a newly repurposed fic from a fandom long past that I had to delete the work from. The good news is that I basically only needed the first chapter of the old fic to help me get started! I love launching stones from previous works, it makes my life so much easier and writing that much more smoother. 
> 
> I don't know how long this will be, but I don't plan for it to be terribly long since I have other works and other Life stuff I have to get to very soon (moving, commissions, etc.), but it will definitely satisfy the lust for multiple chapter story readers!
> 
> I'm not giving anything away , but I am very excited for this, and even more excited for the conclusion that I have planned (O_O); 
> 
> I hope you all enjoy this fic as much as I enjoyed writing it! Zombies with The Witcher in modern Poland WITH GAYS and sassy teenager Ciri? Who WOULDN'T want to write it?!
> 
> Enjoy, and happy reading! ♥
> 
> SUBNOTE: every chapter will have a list of songs that I listened to throughout that chapter's writing process that I felt fit perfectly for the scenes/situations presented!

_ (Songs for this chapter: “Death” by White Lies, “Soldier” by Fleurie, & “Game Of Survival” by Ruelle) _

*** * * ***

Fantasy. That’s what all of this was supposed to be. Pure, unadulterated, teenage romance movie fantasy. Video games, even. Comics, books, movies, and all of those things that you weren’t supposed to take seriously. It was make-believe. For nerds, and the teenage girls who only  _ thought _ it would be cool to live like that. For the people who dived far too deeply into their  _ World Of Warcraft _ stories or their  _ Call Of Duty  _ and  _ Left 4 Dead  _ video games long into the early morning hours. 

No . . . this was supposed to be fantasy. And as such, it was supposed to stay right there where it belonged: in the fantasy world. Not the real world. Not in the here and now. And never, ever, in a million lifetimes was it supposed to happen not once before, but nearly a decade later down the road for the  _ second  _ time.

And by then, everyone had mostly forgotten about the first time. The dead coming back to life, ripping people apart one by one. People getting bitten and living long enough to tell about it. People packing up what they could, pets and all, and leaving as soon as they could. The sheer panic, the thrill from those who were just  _ waiting _ for their moment to show off what all those hours of video games taught them. 

But then, just like that, it was quiet. Someone, or maybe many someones, had stopped the epidemic before it had left the country and spread. For a short while, the news outlets told the rest of the world that they were safe. That only the little, but bustling town of Rynek, Poland had been the only infected hot spot, but nobody knew why, or what was the cause of such a horrific, short lived epidemic. 

They were told that once the infected persons were separated from those who weren’t, it died off. And those who had already been too far gone were killed on the spot, with little to no mercy. After all, they weren’t exactly the same people they had once been before. And those who had sustained bites or scratches? Well, let’s just say there was only so much Rivaxone to go around. 

Some people actually were the lucky ones. And that really ended up being boiled down to whose side you were on. Who  _ you  _ counted as the lucky ones.

Geralt didn’t count himself so lucky. 

You could only hear the screams of people getting torn, gutted, and tortured to death so many times before you stopped sleeping at night altogether. Not that he got much sleep these days now, nearly twelve years since the first and the so-called last time it happened.

And he had been damn near on his own that first time.

Geralt had always had Yennefer on his side. She was practically in his back pocket when he needed it the most. He was a bit of a loner, sure, but that didn’t stop her none. They’d only recently become friends the first time around. She was still in college, and he had just dropped out. He didn’t have anywhere to live, and she took him into her apartment. From there, they’d been nearly inseparable. Until the first outbreak.

In all of the chaos, they had not once spoke to each other. They never crossed paths. Geralt presumed her to be dead, and he assumed she thought the same. It wasn’t only until there was nothing left, and no more undead around that they found each other again. 

_ ‘Destiny’ _ she’d called it. 

_ 'Stupid and reckless’ _ is what he’d called it.

But if anyone knew Yen, they knew that she never backed down from a fight. She never backed away from her friends so long as the loyalties were returned. Geralt had tried to get her to leave, but she wouldn’t listen. So instead, they resumed life together as usual. And that, unfortunately, was that.

It had only been two days before the TV in Geralt’s favorite bar made his ears perk up. There was a mention of some strain of a viral infection going around at one of the hospitals on the other side of Poland. Just a few cities away, people were suddenly dying at an alarming rate, and no amount of medications seemed to be working. 

Then, just as Geralt was about to take down another swig of his beer, the words  _ ‘coming back to life’ _ and  _ ‘bite marks’  _ and finally  _ ‘similar to the outbreak twelve years ago’ _ shook his bones to their core. There was no way. No friggin way this was going to go down again. They were mistaken, paranoid and worried perhaps, but certainly wrong. They’d fixed it last time, swore to the world and citizens of Poland that everything had been taken care of.

Geralt tried not to be worried, but he knew that he’d be wrong not to take heed of the warnings on that damn bar television.

And for a whole twenty-four hours, when Geralt had come back to what was home for him for the past ten plus years not only to Yennefer but her long-time college girlfriend Triss, things were okay. He had even called up his long distance boyfriend, Jaskier, who was currently living two hours away in Bydgoszcz chasing some new musical dream of his after leaving his parent’s house and finishing some three-odd years of music studies. 

But according to the all-too chipper sounding tone of Jaskier’s voice, it was confirmed that there hadn’t even been a mention out in Bydgoszcz of what Geralt had heard. 

And with nearly three hours straight of listening to Jas doing all of the talking, and Geralt himself mostly smiling and nodding with a few utterances, the world felt near to normal once again. No threats of the undead, no thinking about Rivaxone. Just hearing in the distance behind him in the apartment’s little kitchenette the soft sounds of Triss’ Echo Dot playing songs softly while she cooked dinner. Dimmed lights flooded out softly into the living room, and illuminated the spaces between Triss and Yennefer as they alternated between food prep and dancing, which made Geralt both smile at the calmness of the two and something in his chest ache for how far Jas really was.

For about a whole day, it was okay. The world was exactly how it should be, both inside the apartment and out. 

Later into the evening, wearing nothing but a freshly washed navy blue t-shirt and loose fitting heather grey boxers, silver-white bleached hair pulled up into a flimsy looking attempt at a bun, Geralt had quietly made his way into the bathroom long after Yen and Triss had fallen asleep.

Sighing heavily with his eyes closed, Geralt swiftly flung open the medicine cabinet, a single prescription bottle staring him in the face. For a second, he thought back to all the times he would lay awake and wonder if something like this would ever happen again. 

And in that moment as his hand frustratingly grasped the bottle and opened it out into his palm, against his better judgement, while the world inside and out was calm and quiet, Geralt had unwillingly let his guard down.

*** * * ***

It all happened so fast. Geralt , at first, didn’t even hear it. And he sure as hell didn’t see it. The next thing anyone knew, was the white-haired man was bolting out of his bed at the sounds of screams coming from the kitchen, and he was stumbling through his sleepiness, stumbling over himself down the narrow hallway.

And it took a moment for his immaculate hearing to focus on the sudden and loud sounds of emergency sirens echoing both outside and inside the apartment, followed by the sounds of distant screams and gunfire. Geralt had no idea where anything was coming from, his sense of direction completely disoriented until his intense amber eyes found themselves staring into the moonlight flooded kitchen, where sparkling glass shards decorated the floor. 

_ “Geralt!” _ was the scream that reached his ears as he carefully but quickly made his way around the glittered glass that covered the kitchen floor. It was Yennefer, which could only mean two things: It was bad, or, it was already worse.

“Yen?!” His hand clumsily tried to find the light switch, but once it had been found and flipped up, it was no use. Power was already going out. “ _ Fuck,”  _ was the only thing Geralt could say after that.

It didn’t take long for his best friend to grab his hand and pull him over away from the blown out window that was letting very little light inside, to which Geralt was grateful for under his disoriented condition. 

But soon as his eyes focused on the lack of light around him. Yennefer was wearing her favorite black spaghetti strap silk jumpsuit, though her face was cut up and hair in disarray from her braid. Triss was backed into the corner behind Yen, legs wearing green plaid pajama bottoms pulled up to her chest while her hands and arms enveloped her head, covered by a thick orange colored wool sweater.

Geralt took Yennefer’s head into his hands immediately, looking over the still bloody scrapes peppering her cheeks and forehead. “Fuck, Yen what happened?”

“I think you know,” Yennefer replied shakily, her violet-blue eyes staring at him with so much resonance that it scared even him.

“Fuck,” Geralt uttered again, setting his jaw before forcing himself to look out at the broken window pane. It was only then that he could truly hear the blaring sirens, followed by even more distant screams that seemed to only be getting closer. 

The first thing that came to mind was getting them out of the apartment. The second thing was hoping he could make it two hours away for Jasiker before anything left Rynek and began to spread. The third was getting  _ back _ to his bedroom and the bathroom before they did any amount of leaving.

“What are we going to do?” Triss finally lifted her head and came out from the shadows behind Yennefer, her voice just as shaky and alert as Yen’s was. “This wasn't supposed to happen again.”

“Do you think you two can get to the car?” Geralt asked without tearing his eyes away from the chaos he heard outside.

“The- the  _ car _ ?” Yennefer responded with a scoff. “Are you fucking insane?” She held up a hand as Geralt turned his head to finally look at her with a crooked smirk and tilt of his head. “Don’t answer that. I know the answer already. But you’re honestly telling me you think the two of us can make it all the way downstairs, out the  _ front door _ into the streets and to the fucking car?!”

_ Out the front door . . . that’s it. _

“I’m not asking you to take the front door,” Geralt said slowly, his eyes immediately locking onto the door just behind Triss. It was the only available emergency exit in their apartment and it just so happened to be a single flight down from where they sat, and led to the very back of the apartment building.

Triss looked behind her, curls bouncing almost as wildly as her head had spun. “You can’t be serious. The car is out front, we’ll never make it.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Geralt grasped Yennefer’s shoulders. “I parked it back there when I got home from the bar. You can make it if you’re quick. Unlock it on the way down and it will register eventually.” 

Getting up cautiously to his feet against the kitchen counter that attached to their stove, Geralt grabbed his copy of the car keys that hung on the wall just above the counter and shoved them into Yennefer’s open palm. “I’ll meet you out front in five minutes.”

A sickening and gut dropping  _ CRACK! _ suddenly tore Geralt’s attention away from his directions, head whipping around to the source of the sound. “Ah, fuck me.” With his heart plummeting into what was the rest of his ill feeling stomach, he groaned with the loll of his head, grabbing Yennefer’s arms up onto her feet as fast as he could. “Better make that ten minutes.”

Before either of the girls could protest with another breath, Geralt practically shoved them out the back door with an apologetic smile and  _ ‘Sorry about this’  _ , locking the door behind him despite their protests and screams as they pounded on the door.

“Sorry, Triss,” Geralt mumbled to himself, snatching the goldenrod colored rubber handle of Triss’ favorite frying pan just in time for a small hoard of five or so zombies come barreling through the busted front door and clambered a little too quickly for his taste towards the kitchen, walking across the glass as if it were water to them.

Though, unfortunately for him, Geralt wound up ducking and rolling himself right onto the glass, a thousand tiny shards embedding themselves into his forearms as he swung his other arm out towards several zombie legs and slammed mercilessly into them with the frying pan.

Luckily enough, that one swift swing was enough to detach a couple of legs enough for Geralt to get back onto his feet, far away from the glass and squirming, growling mess of legless zombie bodies clawing their way into the deserted kitchen. 

Buying his time as quickly as possible, Geralt flung himself down the hall, running at a pace he wouldn’t count as humanly possible towards the bathroom. That was first, and foremost, the most important stop he was ever going to make. 

Nearly ripping the medicine cabinet door off, a now slightly bloody knuckled hand grabbed the pill bottle off the shelf, using all of his hip strength to open the door back up before effortlessly sliding into his bedroom. And with a quick kick at the door, it was slammed shut, knowing full well that with that much sound, it would be only seconds before his legless friends would come crawling his way.

Throwing both the bloodied up frying pan and pill bottle onto his bed, Geralt mumbled erratically to himself, counting the seconds down that he had left in the apartment, and just how much time Yennefer and Triss would have at the back in the car before he would have to take a chance at getting to them and getting the fuck out of here. 

Flinging open the closet doors, he reached behind a few hanging clothes, hand grasping around thick buttery leather. “Perfect,” Geralt mumbled breathlessly, drawing out from the closet a very large sheath, slinging it cross-bodied around his chest, the gleam of silver and matte black shining off the moonlight casting through his blinds. Digging just a little bit more, he found a red and pink geometric patterned duffel bag Jaskier had left the last time he visited, and began to shove it full of various other weaponry from the top shelf of the closet.

Daggers, knives, a slingshot, and two pairs of pure gold and silver brass knuckles got tossed into the bag along with random grabs of shirts, pants, and hoodies. He wouldn’t have time to get to Yennefer and Triss’ room and get himself out the door, so they would have to make do with whatever he grabbed for now on the way to Bydgoszcz. After the first time, he swore himself more prepared than ever. He just hoped that it wouldn’t ever come back to that again.

How stupid and wrong he had been.

Suddenly, just as he was tossing in his phone, charger, and the pill bottle into the questionable contents of the bag on his shoulder, right on time as he had predicted the danger was calling once again at his door. Quite literally.

Geralt bit his lip, weighing his odds with a frying pan and a sword. He could get the job done, sure, but what was the risk of being bitten? What were the odds that something could slip? A wrong step, a stumble, a misjudgment. Yennefer and Triss were waiting for him. And Jaskier was two hours away from where he should have been in the first place. With them. With  _ him _ .

No. It was too soon to take a chance at the odds. Geralt didn’t trust himself enough right now.

Splintering wood saw Geralt quickly bounding over his bed to the windows, tearing down the blinds and forcing open the one window overlooking a sloped roof. It was also the only window clearly overlooking the messy front streets below, and unfortunately, there was no copper colored car in sight. 

“Fuck me. Again,” he mumbled, grabbing both sides of the window pane, lowering himself down onto the roof under his scraped up feet. Both arms out to his sides, Geralt carefully scaled the length of the scratchy, sloping roof, wind scraping wildly at the hair escaping his bun, and stinging the cuts along his cheek and forearms from the glass. His left hand shakily held tight to Triss’ now dented up, blood caked yellow pan.

All around him were screams, horrible, blood-curdling, terrifying screams. Search lights glowed in the smoky distance as the sirens blared loudly, but somehow became more distant as the number of human screams quieted. Growling, hissing, and unholy demonic screams grew louder in the streets below him. The scene ahead looked like a bloody, smoky, bomb-dropping warzone.

It took Geralt everything inside of him not to look up.

_ “Yen, stop! There he is!” _

Whatever or whoever was still looking out for Geralt must have been listening. Because as his eyes cast down ever so slightly to his left, there sitting just below him at the very peak end of the roof in the messy streets, was his car. 

A copper colored Equinox he’d gotten only a few years ago, that under Yennefer’s joke about it being the color of a cockroach, he ended up naming Roach. Now, Geralt wasn’t really a  _ car guy _ , but that machine had gotten him out of some tight spots and got him to some really great ones. It was the one thing besides phones and computers that kept him and Jaskier connected. It was, besides Yen, one of the very things that saved his life the first time this all happened. 

Or what was left of it.

And there was Triss, hanging out of the back seat window, waving her arms up wordlessly as not to attract any further dangers with Yennefer at the driver’s helm, leaning as far over the steering wheel as she could, worried eyes gazing up at him, at least twenty feet up through the windshield.

This was, in so many ways, going to be a long way down.

Panic, adrenaline, and the deafening sound of his heart pumping blood furiously throughout his body filled the near silence that Rynek was quickly becoming around him. 

“Oh don’t you fucking dare,” Yennefer muttered, but knew deep down in the pit of her stomach that her best friend was going to somehow manage to jump down from the roof and  _ not _ completely shatter his ankles.

“You don’t think he-” Triss trailed off, looking back into the car at her girlfriend, but she didn’t even have to finish the sentence to know the look on Yen’s face.

“Oh I don’t think,” she said almost breathlessly, eyes peeling around her for any sneaking undead ready to veer their plan completely sideways. “I know.”

Slowly reaching behind him with his free hand, Geralt slowly grasped the handle of the blade on his back, listening closely to the sounds of his legless horde coming up hot on his heels out of the open bedroom window. Some of them couldn’t quite make it atop the roof and slid down to the ground below, but there were more than enough that clung to the shingles, growling and snarling the whole while, just itching to take out a chunk of his backside.

Geralt was fully aware of the world going on around him. But as he closed his eyes and slowly drew his shining silver sword from the protection of it’s leather sheath, he knew that every second from now on counted.

And it began with his leap of pure faith.

Launching himself into the air backwards with nothing but power in his hamstrings and graceful sliding off his feet away from the shingles, Geralt dismounted effortlessly off the building. 

With eyes slowly opening themselves back up, and a smirk on his face, Geralt found himself mere inches away from a single reaching, growling zombie before falling away from the world above the wreckage he was about to land into below.

And within maybe ten feet from either crushing his skull in or shattering his ankles into a thousand pieces, much to Yennefer and Triss’ relief, Geralt twisted his body around, almost cat like in motion, and with a forceful thrust forward, slammed the blade of his weapon into the siding of their apartment building.

A sickening  _ Crack!  _ of drywall echoed in time with slow fading sirens in the distance and with the screeching of metal scraping against rock as the sword forcibly dragged its way towards the ground bringing Geralt closer to the earth under his feet with it.

Triss had covered her face the moment she saw her girlfriend’s best friend launch himself twenty feet off from where they sat. She was afraid of what she might see, the world around them suddenly becoming still and having grown eerily quiet, like white noise after the TV had gone out. Yennefer wasn’t screaming or crying, so she braved to look out the window. But she didn’t even get to look long before hearing an all too familiar aluminum sound clattering onto the pavement where Geralt had saved his dismount.

“Wait, is that my-?”

“Ah fuck,” followed the sound, and then a hefty grunt and the sleek, scraping sound of a sword being removed from rock. 

Triss leaned over the front passenger side of the seat, unlocking the door as Geralt bolted for his beloved car, a too quickly moving throng of the undead coming hot on their heels behind them. If Triss had to guess, it was because they had heard the racket Geralt made in his great escape. 

“Get in!” Yen screamed, grabbing her best friend by the duffel bag around his shoulder, Triss reaching over to slam his door shut as her girlfriend punched the gas and sent them careening down the road, running over bodies and debris along the way.

Geralt was breathless, adrenaline making his wounds throb, his hand red and hot from the intense grip he had on the sword during the descent. Leaning his head back, there was nothing anyone needed to say. They knew where they were going, why, and what they were about to be in for. The best thing to do was to just let Yen drive, and to tune the world out while they planned their next step.

“Oh . . . fuck,” Geralt mumbled just then, shaking his head with a stifled laugh. Slowly, he turned towards Triss in the back seat, looking out her window and looked down at the dented, blood streaked, pavement scratched goldenrod yellow frying pan in his hand.

Triss turned her head, just as Geralt was passing over the seat a once familiar looking brand new frying pan. She gasped, about to make a comment with fire in her chocolate brown eyes when he spoke again, a half cocked attempt at a sympathy smile on his stupidly handsome face.

“Sorry about that.”

_ “You owe me a new fucking pan when this shit is all over, Geralt Rivia!” _


	2. Part 2: There’s No Room In This Hell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Songs for this chapter: “Unfinished Business” by White Lies, “Back Again” by flor, “Víðbláinn” by Peter Gundry, “Various Storms & Saints” by Florence + The Machine, “Cough Syrup” by Young the Giant, & “The Unknown” by BONNIE x CLYDE )
> 
> I've also managed to fit so many different references throughout this fic writing process and this one both has the Law Of Surprise in it and a brief Anastasia reference, so I hope you guys like those two things mixed together xD

**One Hour since the outbreak**

_I_ _n_ _a quarter mile, turn left and take the exit-_

“Oh for fuck’s sake, shut up,” Geralt sighed with annoyance, reaching across the dashboard at Yennefer’s phone, muting the GPS before leaning back into his seat. He then stared out his window at the mess of abandoned and broken down smashed up cars, some of them still unmercifully housing a mess of bodies behind.

“I hope you’re going to pay attention to that, then,” Yennefer muttered and rubbed her thumbs against the steering wheel, trying to keep her eyes fixed ahead of her on the road instead of what she knew she would see around her as they drove. They still had almost an hour and thirty-five minutes until they reached Jasiker, and Yen knew that Geralt was getting restless.

Jasiker hadn’t answered any of the calls or messages that Geralt had been sending since they'd left the apartment. Yennefer was, in the deepest parts of her heart, hoping that maybe her best friend’s boyfriend had just somehow forgotten his phone, or it was broken, or hadn’t been charged. Jas had been known to be forgetful of his phone from time to time, and it drove Geralt absolutely crazy with their distance.

“Planned on it. Just keep your eyes on the road,” he muttered back, scrolling once more for what seemed like the umpteenth time through his calls.

Yen nodded wordlessly, swerving around a beat up gold van, catching a passing glimpse of a couple of bodies rotting and bloodied inside of it. She could only assume who had been in the van at the time and it made her stomach drop and tears sting her eyes.

This had been the one and only time in her life where she was grateful to be infertile.

“ _Shit_ ,” Yen whispered, suddenly remembering something as she wiped at the corners of her eyes quickly with one hand. “Geralt.”

“Hmm?” He’d given up on obsessively searching through the phone calls and switched back to his messages with only two names showing who he had recently been in contact with. And one of them being the only other person that Yen was thinking about at this time.

“You should call her. I know you’re worried about Jas-”

"You don’t think I’m not worried about her, too?” Geralt’s tone took a sudden cold defense, raising his head up away from the screen. A disgruntled look with frustrated eyebrows drawn fell across his face, and Yen almost wished she could have taken back her words. “She’s a teenager, Yen. Most times I wait for _her_ to find _me_.”

“Unbelievable,” a not-so-gentle scoff escaped Yennefer’s lips with a most indignant shake of her head. “This is _not_ one of those times to be fucking around waiting for a seventeen-year-old girl to call the man she calls her dad. Jesus, Geralt.”

Yennefer tensed up in her seat, knuckles growing white around the steering wheel she was practically glued to. For a moment, her eyes went to the rear-view mirror, checking to make sure she didn’t accidentally wake her sleeping girlfriend. Then, flicking her eyes momentarily back at Geralt, Yen loosened her grip on the wheel and seemed to relax her entire body, save for the frustration that sat on her lower jaw which was jutted out to the side.

“Teenagers can be stubborn and rough around every edge imaginable. And I should know. _But_ that doesn’t mean they are invincible. No matter how many times they try to convince you that they are. She’s . . . she’s probably just as lost and confused and scared as us.”

Taking a brief pause to gather her frustrations and swallow them down, Yennefer once again drummed her thumbs against the steering wheel with nothing but the sound of the engine and wind whistling against the windows between them. “Jesus, Geralt, for all she knows, you might be dead and she hasn’t got a person in the world left. Call her. That’s the end of this discussion.”

Geralt watched her once again firmly set jaw and jut it back out to one side, a habit she’s had for as long as they’d known each other. She was frustrated and scared, and he knew better than the challenge the topic any further. 

“Alright,” Geralt nodded, sitting up a little straighter in his seat, thumbing through his contacts until reaching the list of _C’s_ and stopped. "You're right, as usual."

Staring him in the face was the only _C_ name in his phone, decorated on either side in little blue heart and crown emojis. Not his idea, of course, but when you let a teenager take your phone for a day, suddenly everyone has little pictures and nick-names with their contact info. His heart plummeting momentarily with overwhelming emotion, Geralt let out a short laugh through his nose at the thought of how annoyed he had first been with all of the goofy things she did in his phone from time to time. 

Now it was nothing short of a small comfort.

Making sure that the speaker volume wasn’t so loud it would wake the sleeping Triss in the backseat, Geralt relaxed back into his own seat, bringing one leg up onto the edge of the padded dark grey cushion under his foot, arm resting against his knee with the ringing phone in hand.

Gods above and beyond this country, she’d better still be alive. And she also, for once, had better pick up the damn phone when he called.

_“Dad?!”_

Geralt’s heart wasn’t the only one in the car that dropped into their stomach. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Yennefer nearly whiplash herself towards the distressed sound of the voice coming out of the phone. No matter what Yen ever thought or said, Geralt always considered her and Triss to be like the maternal figures that had been lost. It was always them, with Jasiker form time to time, against the world. Even before the world went to shit the _first_ time.

Ciri had nobody. She’d lost her biological parents and both grandparents during the first strain when it hit. And unfortunately for both her and Geralt in that same breath, her grandmother, Calanthe, who had been one of very few adults that Geralt ever was raised around, died shortly after giving up her last bottle of Rivaxone to him. 

Ever since then, Geralt had taken the lonely girl into his arms and raised her as his own alongside Yennefer and Triss. 

He suddenly felt guilty for thinking more about the safety of his boyfriend first.

“Ciri,” Geralt swallowed down his emotions, not wanting to intensify whatever situation the seventeen-year-old was in. “Where are you?”

“Uhm,” Ciri’s voice shook, her breathing coming in short, ragged gasps. She ran her scraped up, dirty hand over her forehead as she tried to calm herself down enough to answer. “I - I was in, uhm, in Ciechocinek. No, wait, _am_. I’m in Ciechocinek. I was just closing up the coffee shop when everything hit. I - I didn’t even have time to react. I didn’t know what was going on-”

“That’s on the way to Jasiker,” Yennefer whispered, reaching a hand off the steering wheel, zooming in on the GPS map her phone still had going. “We’re almost there now if we take the next exit. And then we can swing back up this way to Bydgoszcz.”

Geralt contained a swear in the back of his throat. That would mean a detour and less time getting right to his boyfriend. But the gods above help him if he didn’t go to Ciri first. He wasn’t sure who would eat him alive first: the zombies or Yen.

“Do it,” he nodded towards her before turning his head away back to the phone. “Princess, I need you to listen very closely to me. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she sniffled on the other end, her voice breaking for a second time. Her hand dropped away from her head, shaking in her lap. Her dark green jeans were torn up at the knees and shins, showing just the slightest bits of bloodied and scraped up skin. “Just . . . be honest with me?”

Geralt hesitated for a moment, his amber eyes falling upon the torn, bloody bodies of a woman and her children spilling out of a small black car as Yen swerved slowly around it to take the exit ahead of them. “Yeah. Of course.”

“It’s happening again. Isn’t it?” Ciri’s voice became small, fading into a near almost impossible to hear whisper. In the background, Geralt could hear the faint sounds of nails scratching against glass. 

Smart girl. She had darted back into the coffee shop as quickly as possible and that act alone had very well saved her life, if not bought her enough time.

He felt Yennefer tense up once again, shifting in her seat as thumbs nervously drummed and rubbed against the steering wheel. For a moment, Geralt closed his eyes to avoid the oncoming views of more abandoned cars and discarded bodies. The silence between him and the phone made his stomach knot up, his heart slowly pumping in his ears. This was probably the hardest part of the whole deal: being honest with her. 

Unfortunately, Geralt himself hadn’t exactly been one hundred percent honest with her from the beginning. Suddenly the weight of his pill bottle felt heavy on his mind.

“Yeah, Ciri,” he finally said, his own voice sounding miles away from where he sat. “It is.”

A sharp breath on the other end of the line was drawn in, Ciri tilting her head back against the counter she sat behind, white-blond hair falling out of her low ponytail around her face and shoulders. “Awesome. Truly fucking great.”

“ _Hey_ ,” Geralt snapped softly, but the proud smirk that spread across his face couldn’t carry the tone as seriously as he’d tried to attempt. “What did I say about using language?”

Ciri laughed, almost in disbelief and Geralt swore that he could hear the eye roll through the speakers. “Cut me a break for once would you? It’s the fucking end of the world, you know.”

Geralt smiled, in spite of himself and let out a short laugh through his lips. “Alright. I’ll let you have this just once. Hang tight, okay? We’re comin’ to get you.”

“Promise?”

“Have I broken one yet?”

Ciri sighed softly, shouldering the phone against her ear, thinking back to all the times she’d spent with her adoptive dad. A man who’d never steered her wrong before. A man that she was still getting used to having around. A man who somehow, even after all of her pushing and shoving, still would be there when she needed him. A man who, as far as she knew, never broke any kind of promise to her.

And never had anything to hide from her.

“No,” Ciri finally mumbled, grasping the phone back into her hand. Blue and green chipped painted nails tugged absentmindedly at the frayed strands of fabric around the ripped hole at her left knee. 

A brief pause came up over the phone as if Geralt was weighing his choice of words carefully. “Do you still have that ring I gave you for your birthday last year? After everything happened?”

Drawing her brows together in confusion, Ciri reached down over her denim quarter-sleeved button down for the cold feel of metal. She gently grasped the rose gold band in question before holding it up to eye level with a small smile reading of comfort. “Yeah, Dad. Of course. I - I wear it on the chain grandma gave me. I never go anywhere without it anymore.”

Geralt smiled with his head leaning back against the headrest, remembering all too well the day he’d had that ring made after things had quieted down and the last of the funerals had been attended. “Do me a favor, Ciri.”

“Anything.”

“Do you remember what is says? I know it’s been a whole year, don’t strain yourself too much,” Geralt teased, closing his eyes with his smile slowly fading out of view.

Ciri scoffed, rolling her eyes before clutching the ring gently in between her fingers, turning it slowly, what was left of the cafe lights glinting off the pinkish-gold hue. “Of course I remember,” she whispered almost to herself, emerald eyes slowly scanning the intricate engraving across the band.

“ _‘A Promise Is A Promise, Always. On the Law Of Surprise’._ ”

Geralt hummed to himself as he slowly bit down on his thumbnail, nodding for no reason in particular. With open eyes, he rolled his head back towards the window, taking in the depressing looking trees whizzing by with great speed as Yen applied more force with her foot onto the gas with mostly bare roads stretching into the cloudy nothingness ahead. 

A heavy sigh throbbed in his chest, but Geralt dared to not let it escape. “Yeah. Exactly.”

“You still haven’t told me what that means, you know,” Ciri commented with the tiniest hint of annoyance. She turned the ring over in between her fingers again for a second time, eyes scanning the words once more. 

Geralt removed his hand away from his lips, setting his jaw with hesitancy and hovered his thumb over the red **End Call** button. He slowly turned his head towards Yennefer, eyes trying to scan and read her face. She wasn’t giving anything away, and in the pit of his stomach, Geralt knew damn well that question would eventually require an answer. 

Today, however, was not that day for it.

“Hang tight, Princess,” he ordered softly, tearing his gaze away from his best friend. He bent forward and quietly unzipped Jasiker’s bag, a free hand cautiously digging around for his pill bottle with his own white-blond hair cascading over his shoulders from the bun it used to be restrained to. “Stay low, find a weapon, don’t make any noise, and keep your phone on you. We’ll be there shortly.”

_Beep, beep, beep. Click._

“You’re going to have to tell her eventually,” Yennefer spoke immediately, as though she had been waiting for the entire phone call to tell him just that. Smokey violet eyes drifted to Geralt’s hand pulling his pill bottle out of the bag, taking a mental note for herself of how many tablets were inside. “How long do you think you’re going to last?”

“Enough,” Geralt grunted defiantly, nearly cutting her off. With an effortless twist of the cap, he tipped the bottle onto its side as a single round, green coated tablet softly landed into the welcoming open palm.

“Enough for _what_ , exactly?”

Tossing the pill into the back of his throat, Geralt quickly leaned forward towards the dashboard, grabbing the bottle of water they’d found tossed into the back seat. He coughed slightly with a shudder after the pill made its rocky descent down his throat, eyes stinging as they hardened at the near-pained expression he saw crossing Yen’s face.

“Enough to get us through.”


	3. I Prayed My Mind, Be Good To Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ( Songs for this chapter: “In the Woods Somewhere” by Hozier, “Apocalypse” by Cigarettes After Sex, “Time” by Cute Is What We Aim For, “Whatever Gets You Through Today” by The Radio, “Golden Days” by Panic! At the Disco & for the end of Ciri’s scenes, “Uprising” & “Crisis Avert” by Damned Anthem )
> 
> Aaannnd I'm back! With a new laptop, a refresher on all things Witcher, nothing coming up other than assigned appointments for the month, and some new adds to my zombie au playlist! Time to write and play catch up on all of the chapters ahead! ( I . . . am *so* far behind on writing this with everything that happened in Feb @_@; )

**Two Hours & Thirty Minutes since the outbreak**

The dull, throbbing ache in the back of his head was enough to make him want to throw up. The world felt like it was spinning, his feet continuously stumbling and slipping out from under him with ungraceful sprinting. One moment he was asleep, the next moment he was grabbing whatever could fit in his hands and arms, put on his back, and made a run for it.

Wait.

Did he grab his phone? 

_ Shit _ . 

He couldn’t remember; and if he hadn’t, it was far too late to turn back now. He was going to get his ass kicked later for not having grabbed it. That would absolutely be for sure.

It was starting to rain which made the whole situation a bit worse. Jaskier blinked through already heavy lidded, hazy eyes as he stumbled through the streets of Bydgoszcz. Streets that reeked of the dead, streets that were littered with various debris of bodies or looted homes and shops. Streets that were, for the first time in hours, completely still and silent. That was almost just as chilling as the terrified screams of the living mixed with sirens in the distance and cars honking or crashing into each other trying to leave as quickly as possible. Everything had happened so fast, that before Jaskier knew what hit his senses, the sounds of chaos suddenly turned into white noise.

The only sounds that accompanied the singer were his own heartbeat thrumming in his ears and the pattering of rain as it fell onto the pavement, the cobblestone sidewalks, and the brick or tin covered rooftops of buildings around him.

“This damn well suuucksss,” Jas muttered to himself, nearly throwing down his lute bag in frustration. That was, above everything else, the very first and last thing he remembered grabbing. Which is why Geralt was going to kill him for forgetting his phone.

That is, if the zombies didn’t get to him first.

“Maybe I should go find a phone store, eh? Though I doubt it’d be of any use to me. They’re probably all gone by now,” Jaskier had this habit of talking to himself out loud when nobody else was around. Or even when there  _ was _ someone around, he’d do it. Another thing that drove his boyfriend absolutely crazy. 

“Don’t even know if any of the bloody towers work, anyway. Doubt it, if the television stations have all cleared out by this point. Huh. Wonder if the radios are still broadcastin’...”

Jaskier sighed heavily, grasping his bright red lute bag by the handle, raising it up over his right shoulder. The rain was starting to turn into mist, which meant it was about to get chilly real fast. And all he’d managed to throw onto himself were a pair of coral pink cargo shorts, a navy blue Hawaiian button down with yellow flowers printed onto it, and a pair of dark chocolate brown loafers. He suddenly laughed to himself, thinking about it before shaking his head.

“Ah yes. Top zombie apocalypse fighting wear, Jaskier. Great choice, really. Just wait until Geralt hears about this.” He paused then, drawing his brows together thinking his words over. “Or rather sees it. You know . . . if I ever get around to actually finding him first.”

He knew that Geralt was still alive. By god, that was the  _ only _ thing that Jas knew right now. If Geralt had shoved and brute-forced his way through the first time this happened, then there was not a single doubt in Jaskier’s mind that his boyfriend was alive, kicking, fighting, and probably driving his way out of the madness.

And hopefully, towards Jasiker himself.

The musician knew he would never make it Rynek on foot. It was two hours to drive there and back, never mind  _ walking _ . But Jaskier figured that if he at least got started, then maybe he would eventually make his way out of the city and onto the main stretch of highway. And maybe  _ then _ , just maybe, Geralt and his copper metal steed would somehow reach him and everything would be okay again.

Then again, there was also Ciri. And if there was one thing Jaskier knew about the world lately, it was that sometimes people had to choose what to do. And maybe, just maybe once more, Geralt would choose his daughter over his annoying, struggling musician boyfriend. When was the last time anyone heard of a  _ lute _ being in a band? 

Exactly.

Jaskier wouldn’t blame Geralt. Hell, he wouldn’t even be  _ mad _ at his boyfriend. That girl meant a lot to him, and understandably so. The poor teen had barely made it through the first rush of undead. Lost her parents  _ and _ her grandparents in one foul swoop. Geralt had split a lot of his dedicated time after that between Jaskier and Ciri. 

He sighed softly, dropping his head back, hazel eyes staring right up into the darkened grey skies above. “I hope you find her, Geralt. And I truly hope she’s okay.”

“Oh, me?” Jas piped after a few short seconds with a laugh, setting his sights back onto the long stretch of sidewalk and littered roads ahead. “I’m fine. A little beat up and blurry in the head, but I’ll be fine. Maybe a couple of scrapes, I haven’t really gotten a good look at my face or anythin’ in the last few hours.”

Then slowly, as if fading away with the rest of the world a little at a time, the rain stopped. Even the light mist let up, the dense fog in the streets lifting for clearer vision for the first time in what felt like more than just a couple of hours. The world was, for lack of a better term, dead silent once again. Only the sounds of his still-beating heart and the gentle winds making their way through empty houses and broken windows joined in on Jaskier’s ramblings.

“This’d make a  _ great _ song, you know,” he continued softly as if in his own thoughts more than speaking aloud. And for a split second, his eyes closed tiredly, causing him to stumble a little bit, but unfortunately unable to regain his balance. 

Down towards the rocky, uneven pavement Jaskier went; his precious, case protected lute hitting the ground beside him with a faint jostle of his strings vibrating with the impact. His hands scraped against the ground below him, kneecaps stinging with pain as his skin tore open from the force of the fall against pebbles, and slick dirt created from the raindrops that fell just minutes ago.

He didn’t even say a word. There was no hiss, no shout of pain, nothing but exhaustion and desperation shaking his bones. Jaskier could have laid right there and had fallen asleep if he knew that there wasn't immediate danger lurking  _ somewhere _ . The town might have fallen quiet, but that didn’t mean it would stay that way for long.

Shaking his lightly bleeding hands away from his clothes, Jas blearily looked around for the bright red bag that contained his instrument and sighed deeply once again as he allowed his body to momentarily surrender to its exhaustion, flopping right down onto his back beside it.

With nothing but his breathing, a rapid heart beat, and the whistling wind around him, Jaskier carefully pulled his prized lute from its case, the dark cherry wood color nearly glistening under the lowly dimmed and flickering street lamps above him. 

“No time like the present, I guess,” he whispered tiredly, resting the instrument against his chest. Slowly closing his eyes, the beaten down musician brought his left hand up to the neck of the lute, pressing down on a couple of strings. With his right hand hovering gently over the strings, Jas’s dirt-and-blood smeared thumb slowly strummed up and down the strings.

A low hum escaped from his lips for a few moments, the sounds of his lute filling the empty grey void that surrounded him at every angle. The world seemed further away than it had ever been before, and so much crueler and colder than Jaskier could have ever remembered.

“ _ Got the music in you, baby, tell me why . . . Got the music in you, baby, tell me why, _ ” Jas’s soft, tired voice carried through the silence in time with his strumming as the rain started to gently pick up once again. It pitter-pattered gently around the unforgiving ground below him, almost tauntingly so, and yet almost in perfect tune with how his bruised and aching fingers strummed. 

“ _ You've been locked in here forever and you just can't say goodbye. . .  _ “

*** * ***

Ciri couldn’t remember the last time she felt so anxious. But if she had to gather up a guess, it would have been the very first time she’d actually  _ met  _ Geralt.

Not that it had been particularly  _ anxiety  _ inducing for her. It was just under a set of stressful circumstances, and she had barely even heard of the man before the world nearly fell apart the first time around. She wasn’t sure why it had been one of the lesser kept secrets from both her parents and grandparents, but Ciri wasn’t always in a position to ask questions. Especially ones that she didn’t understand the answers to.

Nearly five minutes after having been basically hung up on by Geralt, the scratches and sounds against the glass doors at the front of the cafe stopped. And it had been with the utmost caution that Ciri slowly rose to her feet to peek over the counter and take in her surroundings.

It was said before that when this had happened the first time, most of the undead would get bored of chasing prey or waiting for people to  _ think _ it was safe to come out and move on. As if walking undead people weren’t dangerous enough, some of them were not only pack hunters, but actually unfairly quick at learning.

Maybe the human race really  _ was _ that stupid.

Standing completely straight behind her usual post, Ciri sighed heavily before grabbing at her hair to tie it back up into a mess of a bun atop her head. She then slowly surveyed her surroundings with a heavy-weighing heart that had become cluttered with broken tables, piled up chairs, shattered coffee cups, and discarded body parts. The walls and floor were smeared with stale smelling blood and broken glass littered nearly every square inch of the cafe’s front room floor.

Gnawing gently at the bottom of her lip, the teenager tried to figure out her next move before the Calvary came calling for her. Geralt had said to find a weapon, so she supposed that should be her first move. But there was only so much in a coffee shop that could be considered a weapon that didn’t weigh over twenty pounds unless you worked in the back kitchen. 

“Fuck me,” she mumbled to herself, a mouthy habit that she’d quickly picked up from her surrogate father before tossing her hands up in the air. “ _ ‘Find a weapon’  _ he says.”

Ciri carefully slid her phone into her jeans back pocket, planting both hands over the surface of the sleek, green-and-white marbled counter top before taking a couple of hops on the tips of her toes.

Launching herself upwards with a forceful jump-and-push combination towards the counter, Ciri was on top of it within seconds, sitting on the far left corner while swinging her legs over the front, dangling just a mere foot off the ground. She never understood why neither her mother nor grandmother ever enrolled her into gymnastics because she honestly would’ve killed it. Not that it mattered  now .

“Okay, so. Weapon. R _ iiiiiiii _ ght,” Ciri whispered, wrinkling her nose at the smell of stained blood and rotting human parts. She did humor herself, though, upon jumping down off the counter when she happened to pick up a piece of a shattered white coffee mug bearing the green-and-orange logo  _HOLY GROUNDS_ on it.

“So much for the irony, I guess,” she muttered with a short laugh through her nose, then tossing the shard lazily over her shoulder.

Holding her arms out to her sides, Ciri began to gently tip-toe around the mess while being careful not to slip as she made her way around the dining room and towards the blood streaked grey-and-blue white washed wooden door that separated her from the kitchen behind it. Surely she could find something sharp in the kitchen to use as a weapon, right? Kitchens were always filled with sharp objects.

And to be honest, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in the cafe’s kitchen. Her job was solely being greeter and coffee maker at the front. 

Why?

Funny  _ anyone _ should ask that.

Because the last time Ciri had tried working in the kitchen, she nearly caused a staff-wide accident resulting in several injuries and broken pieces of cafe property. Geralt had gotten a good earful from her boss, and while Ciri herself hadn’t been there at the time, the fact that she had been able to  _ keep _ her job and work only at the counter making coffee and taking orders led her to believe that Geralt himself had plenty of words to say back.

Successfully clearing the dining area, the kitchen door handle was just within Ciri’s grasp. Cold and nearly foreign to the touch, the teenager wrapped her shaking and scraped up fingers around the handle and with a hearty tug, flung the door open.

Ciri’s heart pounded against her ribs, blood thrumming against both eardrums. She didn’t know  _ what _ exactly to have been expecting behind this door, but it sure as hell wasn’t what her eyes were seeing.

Flickering, dim lights with their wired guts out for the world to see hung over rows of sleek, bare metal silver tables. Stoves sat in the darkened corner to her left, untouched and just as cold as the rest of the world currently felt. Pots, pans, knives, spoons, ladles, shattered plates or mugs, and everything else you could imagine to find in a restaurant-type kitchen lay strewn across the black-and-white checkered floor.

Ciri brought her hands up onto her arms and rubbed them, making slow steps around the tables. Something felt off about the room, and it definitely wasn’t the way the ripped right from the ceiling lights flickered in and out or the otherwise chilling silence of a once bustling and lively kitchen.

Feeling the mental kick of Geralt and Calanthe in the back of her head for doing something stupid, Ciri turned her head in a couple of directions before opening her mouth, against her better judgement. 

“Hello?” the soft, lilted voice echoed off the walls, then bounced off the metal tables in front of her, the eeriness creeping up her back even more than before. “I-if you’re still alive in here, please say something. Anything.”

_ Stupid. Stupid stupid thing to do, _ her brain rattled loudly, knowing that she was already breaking the no noise rule that Geralt had left her with. The second thing she was supposed to do, and she hadn’t even found a weapon yet! 

“Ah fuck,” Ciri whispered, rolling her eyes as she quickly dropped down onto the heels of her feet near the discarded array of kitchen utensils and cookware. “Weapon, Ciri, a weapon for fuck’s sake.”

Eyes wide with anxiousness, Ciri’s shaking hands muddled through forks, butter knives, pans, pots, discarded broken cups and plates, steak knives, and various soup spoons and spatulas before a glint in the direction of the walk in freezer caught her attention.

And from there, her fate was sealed. If destiny was a being, it was a cruel one who held her at gunpoint, ready to fire the next round into her very tumultuous and short chaotic life.

Laying on the bloodied mess of checkered tile flooring, just mere feet away from her, sat a cleaver knife discarded by its lonesome in front of the walk-in freezer. But unfortunately for Ciri, nothing in her life had been that easy so far. The  _ least _ of all being that she would so readily have, in her grip, the perfect weapon until Geralt showed up. 

Had it not been for the small cluster of the undead that stood in her way, that is.

Hovering in the doorway of the freezer, their distant eyes glinted ever so slightly in the darkness whenever a flickering light above their heads shone just right. They were hovering damn near silently, and hadn’t seemed to notice her despite the stupid decision to speak.

They moved as if they were one unit, ragged breathing filling the quiet of the kitchen, Ciri’s ears now very much aware of their noises, how they shifted, and if she had even the slightest chance of grabbing the knife before making a break out the door.

_ Just take the steak knife! It’s still good! Don’t tempt it, Geralt will literally kill you himself. _

“ _ Fuck _ .  _ Me _ ,” Ciri whispered, closing her eyes. If senseless tenacity were a genetic trait, then she’d have gotten it from her grandmother and  _ then  _ have learned it from all her time around Geralt.

Before she knew what her feet were doing, Ciri was taking off towards the freezer, the sudden rush and sound of movement alerting the small muddled mass of the undead in her immediate direction.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!” Ciri loudly cursed to herself as she kept running, hand outstretched for the meat cleaver as she took an unmerciful dive towards the floor.

A hard  _ snap!  _ followed by a blood curdling scream from Ciri that might have shattered windows if there’d been any, drowned out the mess of confused and sluggish moving undead as she slid across the floor underneath them, just mere inches away from an almost certain death.

But the cleaver was now clutched tightly in Ciri’s grasp as she slid all the way against the freezer. With a dizzying thud that rang in her ears, Ciri's head forcibly ricocheted backwards against the open metal freezer door behind her.

Dazed and disoriented with an undoubtedly fractured ulna at her left arm and with both ears ringing, Ciri took a sharp breath in, pushing her searing arm as tightly against her chest that she could manage. Off into the distance, she could blearily make out the small cluster of zombies beginning to make their way  _ back _ towards her. 

The teenager dared not to look behind her into the freezer at what may lay inside as the realization of the open door sent a chill up her spine. For whatever reason that this freezer had been a hot spot for this cluster well after the noises had all settled down, it had graciously made them ignore her for the past two hours she’d been trapped inside the cafe.

Ciri knew that she would have enough time to make it back to the door. All she had to do was get onto her feet first. And while slow at first, the disoriented teenager managed to get back up, being mindful of her fractured arm and the weapon weighing heavily around the fingers of her right hand.

Had she not just slammed herself into a very large, open refrigeration unit, Ciri would have trusted her hearing a little bit more as the distant sound of a revving engine joined in on the guttural, bone chilling sounds clamoring before her.

The throng was coming in a little quicker than what Ciri would have liked, almost as if they were coming out of their freezer induced state of slumber. And that’s when she realized, with a broken arm and with most, if not all of the odds against her, that this was going to be another cut and run close call.

“Geralt’s gonna kill me,” Ciri mumbled to herself, closing her eyes for a brief moment to collect herself.  Then, with a blood curdling guttural shriek of her own, Ciri re-opened her eyes before tearing ahead towards the cluster of undead.

Slinging her good arm holding the weapon she nearly risked her life for, Ciri flung the cleaver against skulls and arms with near-precise motion. Blood splattered against her face and dripped thickly off of the blade as she ducked, spun, and carefully slid herself out of the way of mangled, grasping hands. 

Once she was clear of any immediate danger, Ciri careened herself against the kitchen door, using all of her body weight in getting it open. She stumbled out back into the dining room with glass loudly crunching under her shoes, while quickly on her heels, what remained left of her undead chopping session began barging themselves through the open door after her.

And that’s when she saw the headlights. 

A copper Equinox, sitting itself pretty right in front of the cafe doors. A gasp caught itself in Ciri’s throat, nearly strangling itself from wanting to let out another desperate cry. And once again before she had any other rational thoughts left, she launched her feet off the ground stumbling in the direction of the double doors, just as she saw a familiar silver-white haired figure stepping out of the front passenger’s seat.

Tears stung her eyes the moment she recognized the car and quickly streamed down her face as she clumsily sprinted around the disarray of the dining room with the cluster following closely behind. 

But that cluster very quickly became all but a lost thought to Ciri in the moment as she dropped the bloody cleaver behind her once she reached the double glass doors.

_ “DAD!” _ Ciri screamed through her sobs, once again desperately thrusting all of her body weight against a door just to get it open.

And open got it, stumbling all the while and nearly dropping to her knees halfway through the open door out into the streets sobbing in relief and desperation, the undead still following her a little closer than anyone would have liked.

“Ciri?!  _ Fuck _ !”

Geralt quickly turned back towards the car and reached through the open passenger window, grabbing from Jaskier’s now-used-as-a-weaponry bag for the silver brass knuckles. In what seemed like mere seconds,  he was skidding on his heels towards the glass doors, pulling Ciri up by, gratefully to the teenager, her unhurt arm while delivering one, then two sickening blows to what was left of undead skulls. 

Blood sprayed like paint splatters across the glass doors and Geralt’s face and with a satisfied huff, they both watched as bodies dropped to the floor in a heap; no longer alive, undead or otherwise.

Ciri hung her head down in between her legs, bent over with heavy breathes, one good hand resting on a knee. And for a moment, the world was still and quiet once more, the only sounds being that of hers and Geralt’s heavy breathing which were desperately trying to catch up with the adrenaline pumping through them.

“Ciri, are you-”

Geralt didn’t even get the words out before the teenager shot straight up and whirled around with a forceful one armed hug wrapping around his waist, her head laying with grateful exhaustion onto his chest. “You made it,” she spoke breathlessly, with gratitude like she'd never felt before towards him.

Slowly smiling to himself, a short chuckle came from deep within Geralt's chest as he wrapped one arm gently around her shoulders, a relieved and breathless “ _ Yeah,"  _ escaping through his lips in the quiet of the streets they stood at.

And after a few seconds of thought, a worried but grateful kiss found itself on Ciri's forehead before Geralt tucked her head up under his chin, both arms now finding their way around his daughter in a tighter embrace, never wanting to nearly let her slip through his hands again. 

“I made it.”


	4. Don't Look Past My Shoulder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Songs for this chapter: “Enjoy the Silence” cover by Joseph William Morgan, “Baba O'Riley” cover by Jack Trammell, “Some People” by Goldfrapp, “Little Lover’s So Polite” by Silversun Pickups, “In A Week” by Hozier, “Man Or A Monster” by Sam Tinnesz ft. Zayde Wolf, “Only the Good Die Young” cover by J2, Cyndy Fike, & “Human Legacy” by Ivan Torrent )
> 
> I'm running a little bit behind on my writing with Life lately, so while this chapter is going up, I am working on the next three & also a fanfic for another fandom as well as a knitting commission. Please be patient with me! I know a lot of people are quarantined right now & may rely on some fanfiction reading while they stay home for the next few weeks. I myself, who is physically disabled and a very high risk for 90% of colds, flus, airborne infections, bacterial and viral, will be staying home unless it calls for going to appointments so long that they aren't cancelled. I will be doing my best to provide some reading material for my fanfictions that are ongoing, but I do ask for patience as sometimes my brain just doesn't want to cooperate with me some days enough to write out a single sentence. 
> 
> Thank you so much for everyone so far who has been reading, leaving a comment or two (I LOVE comments! Please feel free to leave as many as you'd like!), a Kudos, and enjoying this fic! I'm super grateful for the positive reception as someone who only watched the Netflix series and was nervous about writing a Witcher fic to begin with. It really has lifted my spirits and made me glad in seeing so many people enjoying what I'm writing!
> 
> Anyway, onto Chapter 4! This one was one of my favorites to write in terms of suspenseful secrets and serious dialogue. Enjoy, be safe, & happy reading! ♥

**Three Hours & Ten Minutes since the outbreak**

“So where exactly are we going, then?” Ciri wondered out loud, her head turning to look at Geralt. Three hours into the mess of the undead and he already looked like he’d been through a whole year of it. 

They were walking through the deserted, quiet streets about a block around from where Ciri had been saved. The weather began to clear up, which meant better visibility, despite the either dimly lit or completely blown out street lights above them.

With no more sounds of zombies nearby or immediately on their heels, Geralt decided it was best at that point to start looking for food and medical supplies. Or at the very least, what would be left of them.

Yennefer naturally protested against it, and Triss knew that they  _ had _ to. After one collective look at Ciri’s broken arm, the decision was made. So they’d parked faithful Roach into a torn up homeowners garage and made their slow excursion down the road.

“Jaskier’s still in Bydgoszcz,” Geralt answered, yanking his brown hair tie out of his ruined half ponytail, putting it between his teeth whilst speaking around it. “An’ I’m runnin’ outta time to go get ‘im.”

Ciri drew her brows together as she watched him frantically bunch his hair up in between his hands into a ponytail, then roughly put the elastic band around three times into a pitiful loose bun. “That’s a whole hour away still, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he grunted, rubbing both hands then over his face. “But we need food, and Triss needs to set that arm of yours first.”

Looking back over her shoulder, Ciri locked eyes with an equally looking tired and disgruntled Yennefer and Triss, who were walking hand-in-hand, both of them giving the girl sympathetic smiles before Ciri looked back towards her father. 

“There’s a medicine shop and an in-and-out store over around the next corner,” she pointed to Geralt’s right with a heavy sigh. “I don’t know if there’ll be anything of use left, but we can take a look and then get back on the road.”

With an almost stunned expression, Geralt looked from the dilapidated buildings they kept passing, then back at her with a damn near proud grin on his face.

“What?" Ciri shrugged, not sure what there was to be so proud of when it was common sense that _now_ decided to guide her thinking. "We need to get going. That’s the closest one, and if we’re quick and grab what we can and need, then we can get back to Roach and onto the main road to go get your boyfriend.”

Behind him, Geralt heard light laughter coming from both Yennefer and Triss, though Yennefer’s ended up becoming a fully invested laugh that rose brightly from her chest. That told him they were both not at all shocked by Ciri’s tenacity.

Smiling to himself, he reached over and put an arm gently around Ciri’s shoulder, pulling her in close at his side. “That’s my girl. Smart, just like your grandmother.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Ciri rolled her eyes, but smiled anyway and leaned into the hug the best she could while still supporting her fractured arm. “Come on. We don’t have a lot of time.”

Quickly releasing Ciri, Geralt smiled softly to himself as he watched her take off towards the ransacked medicine shop; Triss and Yennefer still clasping hands as they strode their way up beside him.

“She’s a firecracker that one,” Yen commented mostly to herself, but knew Geralt heard her nonetheless. She grinned in her best friend’s direction, wrapping her free arm around his bicep in a hug. “I’m glad she’s okay. I missed having her around, you know.”

“Yeah, me too,” Geralt sighed softly with relief once more. Casting his amber gaze towards the women beside him, he gave a short nod towards the store for them to follow after his daughter. “Better go follow after her then. Look for food, drinks, supplies, gas . . . whatever you think we’ll need.”

Yen nodded, first giving Triss a soft kiss on the cheek, then began to walk backwards while saluting Geralt, a mockingly serious look spread across her face in an almost sour frown. “Yes, Sir, Mister Geralt.”

“ _ Go _ ,” Geralt rolled his eyes, both hands planting themselves onto his hips. He shuffled a foot against the uneven, broken street below him, eyes cast to the side away from Triss. His mind suddenly became cloudy, with too many thoughts trying to make their way into him at once.

“What are you thinking?” Triss then asked, hands folded in front of her. Piercing brown eyes held their gentle gaze onto the man next to her. She knew there were about a thousand things running through his mind, ever since they hurried out of their apartment roughly three hours ago. 

So much had changed in so little time.

“What if I hadn’t made it in time, Triss?” Geralt lifted his head with a rough bite onto his bottom lip, jaw setting with emotion, his amber eyes glaring like rogue flames under the street light above them.

“But you did,” Triss spoke slowly, knowing she would have to play advocate to Geralt’s doubting subconscious. “Geralt, there’s no sense in pondering with the ‘ifs’. If we, as humans, did that then we’d never get anything done or get anywhere. Even if the world starts to fall apart. Looking at the ifs, ands, ors, and buts doesn't get us very far and it won’t change the past and certainly won't ensure the future. We can't control everything, Geralt."

A gentle hand found its way onto the man's arm, Triss’ brightly green nail polished thumb slowly rubbing against bloodied and dirt stained skin. “And you know that better than anyone. Don’t you?”

Geralt felt his eyes widen at the knowing tone in her voice. His heart quickly raced as the look in her eyes shifted from sympathetic to fixed, the tightest of polite smiles etched on her face. 

She knew. And how long did she know? Did Yen tell her? Had he been careless in the last few hours? “How did-”

“You’re not very good at keeping secrets sometimes, Geralt.” Triss smiled softly, a near somber look then settling in her eyes. “Maybe we can figure something out for you, too.”

A half-grunt, half-scoff came out between Geralt’s lips as he shook his head with an almost incredulous laugh. “You were always the hopeful one, Triss. But there’s never more than one happy ending. Someone’s always gotta go.”

“Don’t say that,” Triss frowned and retracted her hand, crossing her arms with an indignant sigh. “Ciri needs you. Jaskier needs you. Yen . . . and me, too. You’ll figure something out because you always do. And if you can’t, then  _ we  _ figure it out for you.”

“Did I also mention that you were always a little too stubborn as well?” Geralt teased, finally looking back towards his best friend’s lover, a half tilted smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

Triss’ sour expression quickly turned into a laugh, head shaking with the bounce of her tight brown curls following along. “You might have said that a few times, yes.”

“ _ Hey! _ ” Yennefer’s scratchy toned yell filled the space from where she stood and her best friend and girlfriend stood. Waving a hand up in the air before planting it on her hip, Yen tilted her head to the side as she stood in the broken doorway of the shop. “Are you two going to join us or are you going to let your daughter with a broken arm carry everything?”

*** * ***

“Do you think that’s going to help?” 

Yennefer kept her voice low and peered through the near-empty shelves of the pharmacy in front of her, making sure that Ciri and Triss couldn’t hear them from where her and Geralt stood only a few feet away. 

She was pulling Ace bandages, gauze, band-aids, plastic bottles of alcohol prep, and other various medications and health aids down into one of the many plastic and paper bags they’d already filled up with hardware and basic travel supplies. The pharmacy itself was still intact, thankfully, with only a handful of shelves having been emptied completely of various products.

Triss had already got to work on setting Ciri’s arm, which proved to be a very unpleasant experience judging by the ear-shattering scream the teenager had let out. Which was quickly followed by Geralt running back out into the streets, sword unsheathed from his back and in hand, to do a quick surveillance of the outside world once more. Thankfully, and by the grace of many gods above, there were no undead close by to have heard the agonizing screech of his daughter.

“Geralt?”

His focus being brought back, Geralt gritted his teeth in contemplation, his head not having the right answer that he knew she wanted at the moment. 

The mother-lode had been hit, though Geralt himself wasn’t sure how safe or how recent any of what he held in his hand was. While it was still Rivaxone, it was also no longer a pill. And there was a  _ lot _ of it staring him in the face. Mockingly, almost.

A whole refrigeration unit, still working and plugged in, filled to the brim with blue plastic oval medication bottles, stickers plastered on each one of names he never knew and names that would never see the light of day again. None of the bottles were expired, all of them seemingly brand new since they were all very much filled up with a milky looking liquid. How nobody had been back here and raided it for themselves was baffling to Geralt.

“Will it  _ work _ ?” Yennefer asked again through gritted teeth, hauling her many plastic bags filled with food and medical supplies into both hands, eyes shifting once again behind her. 

“Triss knows,” Geralt set his gaze over towards Yennefer, a twist of his lips telling her everything she needed to know about the conversation that happened outside. And when Yen’s mouth dropped open, he sighed and dropped his head back.

“ _ Jesus, _ Yen, don’t ask me how. She just figured it out. Or at some point managed to get a glimpse.  _ Apparently  _ I’m not always the best at keeping secrets,” he huffed.

“Well that certainly can be true,” Yen stepped up to the stockpile before her, grabbing a blue bottle to survey herself. “It’s the same name. Are they the same ingredients?”

“I don’t  _ know _ , Yen,” Geralt hissed with annoyance and conflict, rubbing his forehead. “I don’t look at the fuckin’ fine print. I just take it because they tell me I have to.”

“Okay, grumpy,” Yen mumbled, turning the bottle over in both of her hands, fingers strumming against the sides as she  _ did _ read the fine print, black nail polish shining off the fluorescent lights above. “I mean I’m sure there’s  _ some _ things that are a little different being a liquid, but it’s the exact same name and dose as your pills.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Geralt sighed heavily, his own hands turning over the bottle he held again and again in thought. “Why are they all still here? Why have there only been, according to the inventory papers on the floor, a couple of bottles prescribed and distributed? Where were all these people?”

“Maybe they just got the shipment before everything happened,” Yen offered, putting the bottle she held back onto the cold shelf. “Not everyone was lucky enough to walk away with a bite, Geralt. You know that. They could have just made this as a backup for those who  _ do _ need it or . . .”

“Or if it happened again. Exactly,” Geralt finished, nodding his head, eyes back down towards the heavy feeling bottle in his hand. He sighed again, hearing in the distance behind him the voices of Triss and Ciri. 

Maybe Triss was right. Maybe there could be a way for him, too.

Eyeballing the shelves up and down in silence, Geralt found his hand absentmindedly drifting to his left shoulder, fingers moving aside the fabric of his t-shirt.

Yen’s eyes immediately became magnetized to the year old scarred up, pink-and-white ashen looking bite mark that lay on his pale skin. You could still count the teeth marks. It was still a sickening shade of yellow-and-purple, though that very well could have been from all of his recent tucking and rolling he’d done. 

She still remembered the day she found out, as though it hadn’t been a whole year ago. When she’d accidentally walked in on Geralt in the bathroom, removing his bandages before taking one of those stupid pills. It had been so bloody back then, almost black in color from the bruising and near infection it’d contracted. It pained him still, even though Yen didn’t know at that point how long it had been there. At first she didn’t know what to say, or what to do. Or  _ think _ . And Geralt looked just as lost as she had.

In the end, she’d asked if he needed help. And once he’d accepted her help that day, she’d known. Her best friend had been one of the lucky ones, so long as the medications kept coming and being produced. Geralt, on the other hand, told her that he didn’t feel so quote-on-quote ‘lucky’.

That had been the first time since meeting Triss Yen had ever brought up the word  _ destiny  _ before. No matter how Geralt saw it, he was still here. And that was something Yennefer knew that all of them needed. 

Even if Ciri and Jaskier didn’t know it. Eventually, like everyone else, they would.

Geralt sighed heavily, mouth twitching to the left, as his fingers slowly rubbed against the mark on his shoulder. A mark that sealed the rest of his life, no matter how the tables turned it. 

“Fine,” he sighed through his teeth, almost begrudgingly to himself. “We’ll take as many as we can carry. Don’t let Ciri see any of them, do you understand?”

“Course,” Yennefer nodded, raising her hand up to catch the bottle he was tossing her way. “Give me another minute or two, and then we can head back and on the road.”

Nodding in response, Geralt leaned down to grab the already filled bags making his way then around the counter of the pharmacy and back out into the storefront where Ciri now stood with Triss, her arm set in place with a sling and a tightly wrapped ace bandage.

“Sorry,” Triss spoke, drawing her eyebrows close together. “It was the best I could manage with what we had. I can’t tell you what the internal structure will do to her body, but I know Yenna found some antibiotics. We can stave it off for a couple of hours, or days at best until we reach actual medical care, wherever that might be.”

Geralt wordlessly but warmly nodded her way, grateful for the help as he inspected Ciri’s arm before giving his daughter a gentle hug. “You did great, Triss, thank you.” 

He lifted the seven bags he held in both hands towards Triss fist, and then some to Ciri on her good side. “Take these back to Roach; Yen and I will meet you there in a couple minutes.”

A look of pure fear crossed Ciri’s tear-stained face, and Geralt knew he should have chosen a different plan than the one he had. “No,” she spoke slowly through a still pain trembling voice. “I’m not leaving without you.”

Triss shot a look towards Geralt, her mouth twisting in a way that told him  _ ‘It’s your turn to give explanations now’ _ before walking into the pharmacy to make Yennefer aware of the sudden maneuver of plans. 

Taking a deep breath through his nose and out through his teeth, Geralt closed his eyes for a moment before reopening them, squatting only a few inches from where Ciri stood at full height. 

“Listen to me, Princess. I know we just met back up, but this is really important to me, okay?” Geralt spoke carefully, slowly as if trying to weigh his words one syllable at a time to make this right. “Yennefer and I have some things to discuss, and I need you and Triss to go put the supplies away, get Roach, and bring her back to us.”

“You’re hiding something from me,” Ciri gritted her teeth, tears pooling her eyes once more. “And if you have something to discuss, you can discuss it with me, can’t you? I’m seventeen, and the world is falling apart. Why should there still be secrets? That’s all my mother ever did. That’s all Calanthe ever did! They kept things from me.” 

She paused as her body worked to take in quick and heavy breaths, hot tears falling off her cheeks, falling onto the dirty tile floor beneath them. “Including you. And since you and I have met, I’ve not known you to ever keep something from me. But if you are, then don’t you think I deserve to know? Especially  _ now _ , of all times?!”

Geralt swallowed thickly, knowing her words hung true and heavy in the space between them. She deserved to know, he knew that. But would she be able to handle it? He may not die  _ soon _ , but what would happen when there wasn’t any Rivaxone left?

“Cirilla,” he spoke slowly again, but softly without any judgement or blame. His hands gently rested on her shoulders, their eyes refusing to look away from each other until there was a resolve. “Sometimes things have to be kept to ourselves to protect others. Your grandmother knew it, your mother knew it, even Yennefer. I shouldn’t keep anything from you, you’re right.”

Removing his hand away from her hurt arm, Geralt found his fingers gently taking the rose gold band in between his thumb and pointer fingers, turning it over as the metal and engraving glinted off the few lights still left on in the shop. 

“And a promise is a promise. But now  _ isn’t  _ the time for that promise. I know things look bad right now and they will be until we get Jaskier and find somewhere to go that’s safe. But I’m telling you, Princess,” Geralt looked away from the necklace, dropping it back down against her chest. Both of his hands gently cupped his daughter’s head as she shook with frustration and emotion, their eyes locked in determination to be the one who was right.

“With all the respect that I have for you as a growing teenage daughter of mine,” Geralt’s fiery amber eyes had met tearful hazel ones with the gentle strictness only a parent could give, “this is simply just NOT that time. And you’re just going to have to trust me.”

The silence was so thick between them, you could have used Geralt’s sword to cut through it. Yennefer and Triss held their breaths, keeping to the pharmacy counter with Triss’ head on Yennefer’s shoulder. In her heart, she had hoped that Geralt would have been honest. But if there was a reason he was still keeping this from his daughter, then Triss would have to follow his plea to trust in him as well.

“. . . Norway,” Ciri finally said, her cracked voice echoing off the bare shelves around them. Tears still fell down her cheeks, her chin shaking with frustration and anger as she wiped them away from her eyes and shook herself free from Geralt’s grasp. “There’s a safety zone in Norway. We can drive part of the way, and then take the rest by boat. I heard my friend Dara mentioning it when everyone was scrambling to leave. Needless to say, he  _ didn’t  _ make it.”

Giving one more near-disappointed and frustrated glance at her surrogate father, Ciri showed herself away from him with bags in hand and out the door into the quiet streets. 

Sighing heavily with his head hung forward, Geralt slowly got back up onto his feet while adjusting the strap of his trusty sword, teeth tightly set together through a tight-lipped expression.

This was going to be a  _ very _ long road trip.


	5. These Rides Aren't Working Anymore

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Songs for this chapter: “Farewell To the Fairground” by White Lies, “I Am” by Koethe, “Human Legacy” by Ivan Torrent, “What A Day” by Greg Laswell, “The Yawning Grave” by Lord Huron, & “Sail” cover by J2 & Serena Foster)
> 
> I've had my THIRD rewatch of The Witcher now and I've worked a little bit more on this fic on the side of my other current fandom rewatch fics ; these ones are taking a little bit more time, but I'm getting around to them during quarantine time and working on two multi-chapters at a time. 
> 
> This chapter was particularly fun to write because I haven't had the chance to write Geralt and Calanthe's relationship out, so I absolutely felt the need to have a little flashback chapter so I could do that and it worked out SO well for me.
> 
> So enjoy, & happy reading! ♥

**Four Hours since the outbreak**

_ ‘In a quarter mile, turn left onto -’ _

Geralt sighed in slow annoyance, turning down the GPS once again but making sure his eyes were still focused on his next exit  _ and _ the road. Yennefer was sound asleep in the passenger seat beside him, with Triss and Ciri taking comfort in the back seat, both equally just as quiet as they, too, drifted on and off from a wistful sleep.

Ciri hadn’t said much since their little argument in the store, her eyes focused in between naps out the window as more abandoned cars passed by them with messes of bodies both human and zombie alike. Geralt wondered what she was thinking, and couldn’t help but take note of the very similar expression on his daughter’s face that matched his own in the moment.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” his husky, tired voice finally broke through the long stretch of silence that followed after getting back onto the road. Geralt quickly averted his gaze up at the rear view mirror to get a brief look at how Ciri responded before rubbing the heel of his hand over his forehead.

“I hope Jaskier is alright,” her soft and heavy-sounding voice surprised him for a second. “And I mean that. I know how much you love each other. Even if sometimes you aren’t entirely sure of how to show it. You care. And people notice.”

Geralt felt the corners of his mouth lightly tug up in a grateful smile, thumbs slowly running up and down the steering wheel with anxiousness at the thought of getting to Jaskier in time . . . or at all. “So do I, Ciri. So do I.”

*** * ***

_ “What if this happens again? If there’s one thing that history’s taught us, as a stupid human race, is that things repeat. Because we never learned anything the first time. What then? What happens when there’s not enough medicine to go around for the people who need it? What happens when the graveyards are too full for anymore funerals? What happens to us, as a society, if we never learn? Are we the monsters, then, or them? Suddenly the idea of undead people doesn’t seem so stupid anymore, does it?” _

_ Geralt set his jaw, staring intensely into the eyes of a dying woman before him. The still-seeping, bandaged up wound on his shoulder throbbing with every unfair beat of his heart. _

_ “You cannot promise a lifetime to a girl who has just lost everything,” he continued on, the dimness of an elegant and cold-feeling bedroom feeling almost as cruel as the outside world behind them. “And you definitely cannot promise  _ me  _ a lifetime of taking her into my arms to protect and love her. You’re dying. You don’t know what’s going to happen next. You can’t promise that there isn’t going to  _ be  _ a forever after this is all over. And you sure as hell can’t promise that we won’t be stupid enough to have another problem like this one cross paths again.” _

_ Calanthe huffed indignantly between ragged breaths of her slow oncoming demise. Blood stained the sheets she had been placed under, already having been soaked right through the sleeve of her blue long-sleeved shirt. Her arm was bandaged, but it wasn’t going to fix anything. The arm alone had just barely survived being torn off completely before another one of the undead came up behind the woman to take a giant bite out of her neck. _

_ She was lucky that she’d even made it back into the apartment and into her bed for her final breathes, had it not been for Geralt in the first place. _

_ The screams outside of Calanthe’s place had quieted, for now. Geralt stood at the end of her bed with arms crossed over a blood stained, dirty, torn up t-shirt. His hair was a mess of what once used to be a bun but now had strands loose at the back of his neck and around his jawline. The bite on his shoulder definitely wasn’t the worst of what either of them had seen, but it  _ was  _ going to quickly become a lifetime of problems. _

_ “You’re absolutely sure,” Geralt spoke through gritted teeth, “that you saw what you saw?” _

_ “What reason … Do I have to lie? As a woman on her fucking deathbed?” Calanthe retorted sharply, her eyes just as intense as Geralt’s. They always had disagreements, but this was one thing they absolutely couldn’t afford to butt heads about. A life was on the line, and it was going to be up to Geralt to take that life into his arms and run with it. _

_ “Will it be enough to keep her from a situation worse than my own?” _

_ “You know I can’t answer that, Geralt,” Calanthe softened her gaze for a moment, almost seeming sympathetic in manner. “She’s a smart girl. And a tough one.” _

_ “Yeah, so am I,” Geralt snapped, pointing to his shoulder. “Smarts and toughness don’t get us very far, Calanthe. I can absolutely assure you that. Look at what the world’s been reduced to! Look at how many people are dead! And how many more?! You CANNOT guarantee shit. And you know it.” _

_ “So you want to, as your goddamned dying breath, pass it onto the next person. And might I just remind you something. You seem to think that I have all the fuckin’ answers. I only do what I’m told. I only see what’s laid out in front of me. And when all is said and done, I just fucking live because I don’t have any other choice. It’s forced upon me. And you talk about destiny and hope as if it’s going to save us from this bullshit. Because it’s the only thing you have left before you leave this shit of a world. And because  _ you know  _ it’s a shit of a world. You just made yourself more valuable in order to participate in it.” _

_ Calanthe cast her eyes down at her torn up and bloodied arm, a lump forming in her throat. She swallowed it down, but that didn’t stop the tears and quiver in her voice. “I am asking you . . . because I love her. You might not believe me, and I’m not asking you to believe me. But she is all that’s left of this family. And because she doesn’t deserve to be alone after all this is over. She’s going to need someone she knows, someone she can trust. She’s going to be lost and alone. And if you truly think the world is as shitty as you say it is, then you should damn well have the heart to grant me this favor.” _

_ “I never said no,” Geralt dropped his arms with a heavy sigh, walking around to Calanthe’s side of the bed. “I’m just saying it’s an unfair situation and nobody can guarantee her safety. Or mine. And that’s something I need you to understand.”  _

_ He reached down with bruised and bloodied fingers, gripping her hand into his own for emphasis. “I truly wish this hadn’t come knocking on your door as it did. Or any of our doors, for that matter. But I’ll make sure Ciri has a door to always come to should she need it. You have my word, and that is  _ all  _ that I can promise you.” _

_ “Thank you,” Calanthe smiled through escaped tears, making trails down her dirt-and-blood smeared cheeks, gripping back Geralt’s hand with what little strength was left. “I think I’d like to rest now. But I hope . . . things work out for you too, Geralt. And whatever you do, please allow yourself to love. Don’t shut yourself out anymore for the sake of avoiding the chance at being hurt. Because if this world is the only shit-hole we get, then at least we should be people deserving of a lifetime of love before we’re nothing.” _

_ Nodding, Geralt gave Calanthe’s hand a final squeeze before silently exiting the bedroom and back out into the dimly lit living room-kitchenette space, where Jaskier had been patiently waiting, looking just as dirty, tired, and bloodied up as everyone else. _

_ Jaskier jumped to his feet the moment Geralt came into view, quickly crossing his way towards the front door, in a hurried fashion that all too worriedly made Jaskier pick up his own pace towards the man. “Wait. Wait , wait , wait, Geralt!” _

_ Running up behind his boyfriend, Jaskier quickly grabbed onto one of his hands with concern rising in his eyes, brows drawn tightly together as Geralt opened the apartment door. His boyfriend’s own amber eyes were fixated at his feet, as if the world below them both would suddenly swallow them whole and make this nightmare end. “What . . . what did . . . I mean where are we going? What are we doing, exactly? Because up until now, I don’t think we really had, like, a plan you know.” _

_ For a moment, Geralt didn’t say a word. He barely even moved, his gaze fixed on battered up fingers wrapped around the door handle. His other hand, firmly gripped by Jaskier’s own bruised up, shaking one. Truth be told, Geralt’s chest was aching and Calanthe’s words were bouncing around his head like a rubber ball trapped inside of a glass box.  _

_ “We . . . are getting the fuck out of this town first,” Geralt spoke slowly, bringing back his gaze from the doorknob over to his boyfriend. “And then we are going to find Yennefer and Triss.” _

_ Jaskier frowned at the way Geralt spoke. It was too vague, as if whatever moment he had just shared with Calanthe wasn’t supposed to be heard outside of those bedroom walls. “Wh...what about Calanthe? And her grand-daughter, yeah? Are we supposed to do something about that then, too?” _

_ ‘Don’t shut yourself out anymore . . . ‘ Calanthe’s words pierced through Geralt’s chest like the knives she had used to fight her way to her deathbed. _

_ Squeezing Jaskier’s hand, Geralt closed his eyes and leaned forward as their lips for however brief it may be in the moment, met in silence. A wordless promise atop many others to follow.  _

_ “I don’t need you to worry about that,” Geralt whispered once their kiss broke, his forehead touching Jaskier’s. “I just need to get you out of this alive first.” _


End file.
